Danger, Inc. Good people, making an important thing (the Sidekick), under hardware constraints that were neither too limiting nor too generous.
Ask HN: At what company were you happiest and why?
31–40 of 113 posts
Re: Ask HN: At what company were you happiest and why?
#32Working at a non profit in SF. I had almost full autonomy doing both tech support and dev, and by the time I left I had the job down pat. People liked me, and I liked working there.
Alas the obvious downside was not making nearly enough to live on remotely comfortably in the Bay Area.
Re: Ask HN: At what company were you happiest and why?
#33At my current company (Aha!). Fully remote which is great for me because I'm a night owl. Interesting and technically challenging work in my favorite stack (Rails/React). We use our own product so I get to see my new code/features in front of me the next day. Great environment to learn about running a seriously profitable and successful startup from the inside. And the engineering culture is right in the sweet spot -- independent and self-directed but with brilliant colleagues available to bounce ideas when I get stuck; committed to quality but pragmatic about reality for a large codebase; forward-thinking and open to new technologies but cautious about balancing value and benefit vs. the inherent risks introduced by change.
Re: Ask HN: At what company were you happiest and why?
#34My first industry job back in my home country (I live in America now). The company did outsourcing work for a large multinational technology company, and for me it struck the perfect balance between having to be too emotionally involved with the product and getting step by step specs of what needed to be done.
The work was like this: they gave us access to the product's source code and a set of high level requirements (i.e. support standard X, write a new tool that enables automation of Y, add feature Z, etc.). It was up to me and my team members to figure out how to actually implement those things according to the requirements they gave us.
I absolutely loved that setup and really, really miss it. It was challenging in the sense that I had to learn a code base, learn new stuff, read RFCs, and figure out real solutions to real problems. But the problems were handed to me - I didn't have to come up with them.
Every job I've had since then comes with the IMO unreasonable expectation that I be super involved with the product and come up with new ideas and features for it as if I owned it somehow (which I don't). I absolutely loathe that - if I wanted to have that attitude towards work I'd start my own company (which I haven't since I have no business ideas). I'm much more of a "tell me what's the problem and I'll fix it" kind of person, but I haven't been able to find any jobs like that after my first one.
Re: Ask HN: At what company were you happiest and why?
#35Honestly? This warehouse where I was repacking lumber. The lumber would come from the sawmill on a big flatbed truck. However, the lumber would be stacked in a formation that made it impossible to fill up the shipping containers optimally for shipping the lumber overseas. So my job was to (with a bunch of other guys): 1. Unpack the lumber. 2. Restack the lumber in a formation that would allow for maximum lumber loade…
I really miss my first job after school. I was working in a factory. No responsibility, no thinking, just some mindless labour. I worked physically hard enough to be tired at the end of the day and got to talk to my coworkers while the job was pretty much done on autopilot.
But the pay was not great and the career options were non existent.
But I don't think I'd be able to be very happy outside of work on that sort of money now days.
Re: Ask HN: At what company were you happiest and why?
#36I've had a few jobs that I was really happy at. In fact, most of my jobs have been on the happy end and the ones that weren't, I've moved on quickly. I generally like smaller companies where there's a "family" atmosphere.
1. My current company has been pretty good to me. During the 2011 Super Outbreak [0], when my city lost power for a week or so, they took all the employees and their families and put us up in hotels in Nashville for a few days until things stabilized and we could return home. We didn't even have to work if we didn't want to. After a stressful day of tornadoes and a few days with no power, a nice hot shower was very welcome. Stuff like that is pretty normal here. They take good care of us.
2. I worked for a company that did e-learning materials while I was in college. Our product was basically a self-contained website with videos, subtitles, tests, etc, distributed on CDs. This was the early 2000s, so pretty bleeding edge then.
The owner was a business professor full time and this was his side project. We were always small, and him and his wife always took an interest in all the students that worked for them. Getting a home-cooked meal and a night of poker once a week was a nice perk for a poor college student.
The cool thing, though, was there was no pressure to stay. They knew we were students, they knew we were going to graduate eventually and take jobs elsewhere. It was a mutually beneficial scenario where they got relatively cheap labor (but compared to my friends I was making bank), and we got good experience before heading out into the world.
3. I was a park ranger for the NPS in Yellowstone for a few seasons as well. And that was a fantastic job. I wrote about that in another HN thread [1].
Re: Ask HN: At what company were you happiest and why?
#37I was happiest when I was working for someone who I really liked as a person
(that's only happened the once, though)
Re: Ask HN: At what company were you happiest and why?
#38Autonomy, relationships and mastery. Its never about the company or the work. You'll be happy if you have a boss who trusts you completely and colleagues that aren't a-holes. If you have this you will find the work thats interesting.
Amen. I'm on my third job move in the last 6 yrs to try and harness this elusive situation. Hope I've found it this time.
Its very hard to find such situations.
The only way that comes to mind is knowing someone well enough in a company that needs your skills when you need a job. Its a very small intersection in time/space/relationships.
I've always lucked into these situations. And honestly I never really realized how lucky I was because I didn't have anything to compare it to.
Not joining teams with bad bosses is one way to go about this. This is also very very difficult because these guys will offer you a ton of money.
Honestly, the best advice I think is to follow your best boss when he moves once you've found one. (Again this advice only "works" in SV where there are a massive number of growing companies where people move very frequently).
Re: Ask HN: At what company were you happiest and why?
#39Microware Systems Corporation--it was fun to work with really good people on compilers for an operating system that, at the time, was one of very few pre-emptive multitasking OSs one could get for relatively inexpensive computers. It didn't require memory mapping hardware, and thus couldn't use compilers that presumed knowledge of some absolute address where code and data lived (or could be made to appear at with memory mapping). Probably the most fun was modifying the compiler to take advantage of the "as if" rule by avoiding the "usual arithmetic conversions" where possible. I kick myself periodically for not trying to get that published.
Re: Ask HN: At what company were you happiest and why?
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wasn't there a study published recently showing that money really does buy happiness, up to a certain point of diminishing returns?
The one I recall being referenced is from Angus Deaton and Daniel Kahneman (of Thinking Fast and Slow fame): http://www.gallup.com/businessjournal/150671/Happiness-Is-Lo...
I can attest that I was much happier at $80k than I was at $30k, but not much happier at $110k or $140k, less happy at $155k, miserable at $175k (becoming director of engineering). Now I'm at $200k but it's the remote part that makes me happiest.